Hackers, Heroes of the Computer Revolution Chapters 1 and 2
By Steven Levy
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Steven Levy
Steven Levy is editor at large at Wired magazine. The Washington Post has called him “America’s premier technology journalist.” His was previously founder of Backchannel and chief technology writer and senior editor for Newsweek. Levy has written seven previous books and his work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Harper’s Magazine, Macworld, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, The New Yorker, and Premiere. Levy has also won several awards during his thirty-plus years of writing about technology and is the author of several previous books including Facebook: The Inside Story; Insanely Great; The Perfect Thing; and In the Plex. He lives in New York City.
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In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unicorn's Secret: Murder in the Age of Aquarius Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer that Changed Everything Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Hackers, Heroes of the Computer Revolution Chapters 1 and 2 - Steven Levy
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Title: Hackers, Heroes of the Computer Revolution
Author: Stephen Levy
Posting Date: April 11, 2013 [EBook #729] Release Date: November, 1996 First Posted: December 5, 1996
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HACKERS, HEROES OF COMPUTER REV. ***
Hackers, Heroes of the Computer Revolution, by Steven Levy
(C)1984 by Steven Levy
Chapters 1 and 2 of Hackers, Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy
Who's Who
The Wizards and their Machines
Bob Albrecht Found of People's Computer Company who took visceral pleasure in exposing youngsters to computers.
Altair 8800
The pioneering microcomputer that galvanized hardware hackers.
Building this kit made you learn hacking. Then you tried to
figure out what to DO with it.
Apple II ][ Steve Wozniak's friendly, flaky, good-looking computer, wildly successful and the spark and soul of a thriving industry.
Atari 800 This home computer gave great graphics to game hackers like John Harris, though the company that made it was loath to tell you how it worked.
Bob and Carolyn Box World-record-holding gold prospectors turned software stars, working for Sierra On-Line.
Doug Carlston Corporate lawyer who chucked it all to form the Broderbund software company.
Bob Davis
Left job in liquor store to become best-selling author
of Sierra On-Line computer game Ulysses and the Golden Fleece.
Success was his downfall.
Peter Deutsch Bad in sports, brilliant at math, Peter was still in short pants when he stubled on the TX-0 at MIT—and hacked it along with the masters.
Steve Dompier Homebrew member who first made the Altair sing, and later wrote the Targe
game on the Sol which entranced Tom Snyder.
John Draper
The notorious Captain Crunch
who fearlessly explored
the phone systems, got jailed, hacked microprocessors.
Cigarettes made his violent.
Mark Duchaineau The young Dungeonmaster who copy-protected On-Lines disks at his whim.
Chris Esponosa Fourteen-year-old follower of Steve Wozniak and early Apple employee.
Lee Felsenstein Former military editor
of Berkeley Barb, and hero of an imaginary science-fiction novel, he designed computers with junkyard
approach and was central figure in Bay Area hardware hacking in the seventies.
Ed Fredkin Gentle founder of Information International, thought himself world's greates programmer until he met Stew Nelson. Father figure to hackers.
Gordon French Silver-haired hardware hacker whose garage held not cars but his homebrewed Chicken Hawk comptuer, then held the first Homebrew Computer Club meeting.
Richard Garriott Astronaut's son who, as Lord British, created Ultima world on computer disks.
Bill Gates Cocky wizard, Harvard dropout who wrote Altair BASIC, and complained when hackers copied it.
Bill Gosper
Horwitz of computer keyboards, master math and LIFE hacker
at MIT AI lab, guru of the Hacker Ethic and student of
Chinese restaurant menus.
Richard Greenblatt Single-minded, unkempt, prolific, and canonical MIT hacker who went into night phase so often that he zorched his academic career. The hacker's hacker.
John Harris The young Atari 800 game hacker who became Sierra On-Line's star programmer, but yearned for female companionship.
IBM-PC IBM's entry into the personal computer market which amazingly included a bit of the Hacker Ethic, and took over. [H.E. as open architecture.]
IBM 704
IBM was The Enemy, and this was its machine,
the Hulking Giant computer in MIT's Building 26.
Later modified into the IBM 709, then the IBM 7090.
Batch-processed and intolerable.
Jerry Jewell
Vietnam vet turned programmer who founded Sirius Software.
Steven Jobs
Visionary, beaded, non-hacking youngster who took
Wozniak's Apple II ][, made a lot of deals,
and formed a company that would make a billion dollars.
Tom Knight
At sixteen, an MIT hacker who would name the
Incompatible Time-sharing System. Later a
Greenblatt nemesis over the LISP machine schism.
Alan Kotok The chubby MIT student from Jersey who worked under the rail layout at TMRC, learned the phone system at Western Electric, and became a legendary TX-0 and PDP-1 hacker.
Effrem Lipkin Hacker-activist from New York who loved machines but hated their uses. Co-Founded Community Memory; friend of Felsenstein.
LISP Machine The ultimate hacker computer, invented mosly by Greenblatt and subject of a bitter dispute at MIT.
Uncle
John McCarthy Absent-minded but brilliant MIT [later Stanford] professor who helped pioneer computer chess, artificial intelligence, LISP.
Bob Marsh Berkeley-ite and Homebrewer who shared garage with Felsenstein and founded Processor Technology, which made the Sol computer.
Roger Melen Homebrewer who co-founded Cromemco company to make circuit boards for Altair. His Dazzler
played LIFE programs on his kitchen table.
Louis Merton Pseudonym for the AI chess hacker whose tendency to go catatonic brought the hacker community together.
Jude Milhon
Met Lee Felsenstein through a classified ad in the
Berkeley Barb, and became more than a friend—
a member of the Community Memory collective.
Marvin Minsky Playful and brilliant MIT prof who headed the AI lave and allowed the hackers to run free.
Fred Moore Vagabond